Hardly

Definition

hardly /'hɑ:dli/ adv ၁။ အနည္းငယ္ပဲ။ သီသီေလးပဲ။ တားတားေလး ပဲ။ ပြတ္ကာသီကာပဲ။ I hardly know her. ကြၽန္ေတာ္ သူ႕ကို ေကာင္းေကာင္းမသိပါ။ ❍ We had hardly begun/ Hardly had we begun our walk when it began to rain. လမ္း စေလွ်ာက္ခါရိွေသး မိုးကရြာတယ္။ ❍ Tom's hardly ten yet —It's too soon to think about careers! ဆယ္ႏွစ္ေတာင္ မရိွေသးဘူး၊ ေရွ႕လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္းစားဖို႔ ေစာပါေသးတယ္။ ၂။ (esp after can or could ) ႐ံုမွ်။ အႏိုင္ႏိုင္။ I'm so tired I can hardly stay awake. ❍ We can hardly afford to run a car. ကားဝယ္ဖို႔မတတ္ႏိုင္ပါဘူး။ ❍ I could hardly believe my eyes, she looked so different. ၃။ နည္းနည္းမွ်။ အနည္း ငယ္မွ်။ မည္သည့္အရာမွ်။ မည္သည့္အခါမွ်။ There's hardly any milk left. ❍ Hardly anybody (ie Very few people) came to the meeting. ❍ He hardly ever (ie very seldom) goes to bed before midnight. ❍ Hardly a week goes by without someone complaining (ie Nearly every week someone complains) about it. ❍ ALMOST ၄။ (ျဖစ္ ႏိုင္ဖြယ္မရိွေသာ အေျခအေနကို ေဖာ္ျပရာတြင္ သံုးေသာစကား)။ မ…ႏိုင္…။ Don't telephone yet—they'll hardly (ie are very unlikely to) have finished lunch. ❍ The thieves can hardly have got very far. ၅။ မျဖစ္၊ မဟုတ္၊ မရိွ၊ မျပဳႏိုင္။ 'Shall I invite the Hills?' 'Hardly, you know they don't get on with Liz and Simon'. ❍ This is hardly the time to back out. ❍ You can hardly expect me to believe that! ❍ It's hardly surprising that she failed her exams when she did so little work.

Examples

1. He hardly spoke except to say hello.
2. Alice was so busy she hardly noticed the days pass by.
3. [can hardly do something] : We could hardly afford to pay the rent.
4. [hardly...at all] : The countryside around Stowe has hardly changed at all.
5. There was hardly any wind
6. just a slight breeze.
7. You’ve hardly eaten anything.
8. Hardly anyone believed the fugitives’ story.
9. It hardly ever rains here in the summer.
10. The region’s wine industry is hardly more than 40 years old.
11. London is hardly an hour by train.
12. She had hardly arrived when she started talking about leaving again.
13. [hardly had...than/when] : Hardly had the men started training than they were sent into battle.
14. It’s hardly surprising that people are starting to complain.
15. David’s almost twenty-four – hardly a child.
16. This is hardly the time to start discussing finances.
17. [you can hardly etc] : You can hardly expect Myra to welcome you back after the way you’ve treated her.
18. ‘Are you hung over?’ ‘Hardly! I don’t even drink!’